has been steadily gaining ground, that these functions are purely secular, and in consequence the formal relations between religion and the state have been everywhere annulled. But on the other hand there has been a tendency as marked on the part of the civil power to invade the spiritual province by undertaking the support and control of education. For it will hardly be denied that even in its rudimentary forms education touches the springs of spiritual life. Precisely at this point the Roman Catholic Church emerges into significance as an element in our complex ecclesiastical equation.

The growth of the Roman Catholic Church, which according to the census now ranks as fourth in order reckoning by number of parishes, but second if church property be made the test, has been viewed by some with grave apprehension, though, as it would seem, on insufficient grounds. This great numerical increase can be accounted for by our enormous foreign emigration. It has been doubted even whether the increase has kept pace with the emigration, and whether the church has not actually lost in strength by the transplanting of so many of its members to the New World. There seems to be no way of arriving at any precise estimate of the Roman Catholic population; but if the ratio of increase has outstripped the aggregate gain of the nation, the same would equally hold of the larger Protestant bodies. The fact that the members of this communion are mostly congregated in great centres, gives them an exceptional local influence, and exaggerates the popular notion of their actual power. Less fettered by the civil authority than in any other portion of Christendom, they have shown a most intelligent appreciation of the possibilities of their position, and in zeal for ecclesiastical development have certainly been surpassed by none of the Protestant bodies about them. And when we contrast their condition at the Revolution, shut out from political functions in nearly every colony, and celebrating their attenuated rites in a single city, with their present liberty and splendor, it is not surprising that the more enthusiastic among them have learned to look on this country as a Land of Promise. By none among us has the full significance of our political experiment been more intelligently grasped than by the members of this communion. For many

years the Roman Catholic Church held itself aloof from American society. Deriving its increase from a foreign element, owing allegiance to a foreign head, caring nothing for the controversies that racked the various Protestant bodies, its presence was felt only in an occasional debate. It urged no exclusive claims. The acquisition of territory from Catholic states added to its importance, but it was the impulse of selfdevelopment that first brought it into conflict with American society. To insure that development nothing was more essential than that the church should control the education of its young; and strong at length in consciousness of wealth and numbers, it boldly threw down its first gage, in 1840, by demanding the removal of the Bible from common schools.

Had this controversy turned simply on the reading of a few/ verses of King James's version at the opening of the daily exercises, it need have caused no intelligent Protestant embar rassment. Simple justice would have dictated a concessioni involving neither disrespect to the Almighty nor peril to the spiritual welfare of the child. But the difficulty lay deeper; the real grievance of the Catholic was, not that too much, but that too little religious instruction was given in the schools; he dreaded an education from which all positive religious influence had been eliminated; he rejected, in other words, the whole theory on which the public-school system had been based. The attitude which he assumed furnishes an interesting illustration of our religious changes, since in asserting so emphatically the indissoluble connection of religion and education he occupied precisely the ground of the Puritans of Massachusetts and Connecticut, who gave the whole system of public education in this country its first great impulse. With them the spellingbook and catechism always went together. Furthermore, in the remedy which the Catholic proposed, of proportioning the annual amount raised for school purposes among the various religious bodies, he recalled the identical arrangement adopted in Massachusetts to meet a similar dilemma in providing for the support, by law, of public worship.

While it is a wholly gratuitous assumption that the Catholics in their persistent warfare against public schools have been actuated by any covert hostility to those political institutions

which have secured them such unparalleled advantages, especially in view of the fact that the most vehement denouncers of the system of mixed education are among the most enthusiastic and discriminating advocates of our civil polity, it is nevertheless true that by the Papal Encyclical of 1864, which brands "the system of instructing youth which consists in separating it from the Catholic faith, and from the power of the church, and in teaching exclusively, or at least primarily, the knowledge of natural things, and the earthly ends of society alone," as a thing reprobatam, proscriptam atque damnatam, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is irrevocably committed to conflict with a part of our public system which, by the great majority of our people, is regarded as absolutely essential to the perpetuity of our free institutions. This question has been looked at so exclusively from a partisan standpoint, and has been so overwhelmingly decided by popular opinion, that its ulterior bearings have hardly received enough attention. But a cursory glance will show that the problem of the relation of religious and political society is less simple than our politicians half a century ago supposed. If the popular opinion be well grounded, that the temporal and spiritual authorities occupy two wholly distinct provinces, and that to one of these civil government should be exclusively shut up, a position in which the disciple of Mr. Jefferson and the liberal Catholic who seeks to reconcile the doctrines of his church with modern liberty are perfectly at one, it would be difficult to make out a logical defence of our present system of public education. If, on the contrary, it be the right and duty of the state to enforce the support of public education from a class of the population conscientiously debarred from sharing its advantages, then our current theory respecting the nature and functions of the state stands in need of considerable revision.

The theory of the absolute separation of church and state has given rise to another question. The rapid accumulation of ecclesiastical wealth is a fact that could not fail to arrest attention. By the immemorial traditions of all Christian countries, such property has been exempted from taxation. When the Church was a public institution, and when the

benefit of its ministrations was freely open to rich and poor alike, a sufficient reason existed for such exemption. But, it is argued, the effect of our voluntary system has been to render the modern Protestant church little more than a religious club, where Christians in easy circumstances, by paying an annual assessment, may listen once a week to reasonably good music, and to such preaching as it pleases the Lord to send. The portion of the population debarred by pecuniary inability from enjoying this soothing Sunday relaxation is not inconsiderable; a still larger number decline to attend for other reasons. The enormous increase of our public burdens, directing as it has increased attention to the principles on which equitable taxation should be adjusted, has raised the question whether those who derive no benefit from public worship should be indirectly taxed for its support. That exemption is such indirect support, and that so far it tends to throw an additional burden upon other property, there needs no argument to show. It only differs from direct support in furnishing the most liberal assistance to those who need it least. And conceding the general benefits that accrue to society from the positive institutions of religion, the question still remains, Why should a "purely political organism" give even an indirect support to religious worship?

The manner in which this subject has been handled affords striking evidence of the confused and unsettled state of public opinion with reference to the relations of the spiritual and temporal power. Mr. Brownson claims that neither in politics nor in religion is it the destiny of the United States to realize any theory whatever. What the future may have in store for us it would be beyond the scope of this paper to predict, but a review of our past history should incline us to place a modest estimate on our success.

"Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth."

He certainly would be a very bold or a very thoughtless man, who would venture to affirm that the ideal of catholic unity has been reached in our system of "strenuously competing sects," or that the problem of church and state has received a final solution in remitting public worship to voluntary sup

port. At the close of a century we seem to have made no advance whatever in harmonizing the relations of religious sects among themselves, or in defining their common relation to the civil power. The Evangelical Alliance was an interesting expression of individual sentiment; but in proclaiming so energetically that the differences of religious sects were nonessential, it cut away the limb on which its whole fabric rested.

There are phases of religious culture not touched in the foregoing survey which also furnish marked and significant tests of religious progress. A century ago the religious culture of this country was theological. The intellectual strain was in one direction, to solve the solemn problems arising from man's relations to his Maker. Every thoughtful mind was haunted with a sense of the divine order of the world; for however weakened the social sway of Puritanism, it had hardly relaxed its tremendous grasp upon the spiritual nature. The system of doctrine almost universally accepted enforced deliberate conclusions respecting mysteries into which angels might shrink from looking. To these problems the acute and venturesome New England intellect was stimulated by the prevailing methods of intellectual discipline. At Yale College, a century ago, logic held the highest place; and from the school where Burgerdicius, Ramus, Crakenthorp, and Keckerman were "the great lights came the leaders in the most distinctively original and vigorous school of American religious thought. Of this school Samuel Hopkins was the foremost representative. A typical New England thinker, a sincere and noble character, he deserves the veneration that is never withheld from masculine independence and transparent honesty. The elder New England divines were disciples of the Reformation, not of the Renaissance; they were more concerned for accuracy of statement than for polished diction. The qualities which have caused the Ecclesiastical Polity and the Provincial Letters to outlive all controversy, their writings did not share. As a consequence these writings have hardly more influence today on the cultivated intellect of New England than the writings of the schoolmen. Their very phrases have lost all meaning to the men of this generation. This makes it less